Orange Soda is an SEO firm that’s less than five miles up the road from where I live. I have multiple friends that work there, and I have personally been in to see their operation. Last year they contacted me and offered me a position in their company. I’m not going to say I know everything about them, I don’t. What I do know is that they’re growing a ton, and lots of people are hiring them right now.
If you’re thinking about hiring Orange Soda to do your SEO, I want you to consider a few things.
They Don’t Rank For Their Keywords
The page title they’re going with on their home page is “Internet Marketing with Fizz | OrangeSoda Internet Marketing” – obviously they would like to rank for ‘internet marketing’. As of five minutes ago they rank #120 for the term. Since I rank top 10 for that term with CourtneyTuttle.com I can tell you that it shouldn’t be that hard for a group of ‘online marketing experts’ to get onto that map. I’m not saying that they should be #1 but they should at least be somewhere in say, the top 20.
I would imagine that when they find this review a few of them will comment and say that they haven’t focused on getting ranked because they use other avenues to make their sales. I would think that a group of online marketing experts could get a solid ROI on their SEO work, especially since they can do it for less money than they sell it to the consumer for.
I can tell you right now that they don’t generate hardly any business for themselves using SEO. They don’t rank anywhere for most of the terms they go after. They do rank #1 for ‘local internet marketing’ – they have to rank for something because they have to have something to show their potential clients. I can tell you right now that they get very little traffic from the term because I have ranked #1 for it before with CourtneyTuttle.com. There wasn’t any traffic there so I dropped the effort on it.
No One Uses Their Site
This is a company that uses old school marketing techniques to sell an ‘internet marketing’ product. Again, I would have to question why you wouldn’t simply use the internet, if you’re online marketing experts.
If you want any proof that no one uses their site, take a look at their blogs. Their search engine optimization blog hasn’t had a comment in five months and their PPC blog hasn’t had a comment ever (it’s been online for 13 months). I’m sure they have decent traffic overall on their site, because they have a ton of sales reps showing it off everyday.
This is a fairly large firm. The last I heard they had around 200 employees. Frankly it’s pretty hard to believe that they haven’t been able to make any waves at all in the online world, and I definitely think that’s something to consider if you’re thinking about giving them your money. Establishing a blog really isn’t that tough, for an online marketing expert.
SEO Does Not Scale Well
I have a friend who runs an SEO firm. How do they generate their business? They rank for SEO related terms, get traffic from Google, and that traffic turns into leads and sales. This happens to work out great, if you know SEO. This guy knows what he’s doing. His sites rank amazingly well for really hard terms – he’s a legit expert.
His company turns clients down all the time. Why? Because SEO does not scale well. SEO is a soft science that honestly requires a ton of expertise in the implementation. There are a limited amount of people that you can sell to when you’re really good at SEO. The minute you’re having inexperienced people handle the work, the execution obviously goes down and with SEO, that’s going to be a huge problem. I admire that my friend has stayed small because his firm is honestly legit.
A large company like Orange Soda is going to have to hire people that don’t know the business and train them to do SEO. If you have a smaller site, you can probably expect the new employees to be doing your implementation.
People that pay for SEO should be able to get a solid return on their investment. There are companies that have the expertise to do it, and there are companies that don’t. I’ll let you come to your own conclusion on this one.
Man, this review might just take all of the fizz out of Orange soda’s SEO juice, if they ever had any to begin with.
What is it with these operations selling something they don’t even use? Haven’t they heard the expression “eat your own dog food”? I’ve hearing Orange Soda more and more in conversation with local business owners I know, along with other firms I never knew existed, like Yodel. Watching these sorts of firms bilk business owners who are already strapped for cash aggravates me to no end.
OrangeSoda does use SEM techniques to promote its site, but the company’s target customer is the local small business owner who is doing little on the web to promote his or her business. Many of those business owners are not familiar with SEO or PPC, and are not searching online for companies to do online marketing for them. Many still rely on traditional advertising media and channels. OrangeSoda uses some traditional marketing methods to reach those business owners, educate them, and then help them get better business results for their advertising spend by directing some of it to online marketing. No online marketing company has found the complete solution to successful online marketing for small local businesses, but OrangeSoda is doing a lot of things right and helping their customers succeed online.
Love your stuff court. I’ve been following Grizz’s blog for about 4 months and your blog for a couple months.
It’s good to see some honest people in the MMO world!Interesting note about the so called SEO companies out there. My brother-n-law hired a few “SEO” experts a couple months ago to help get his limousine company ranked. This SEO did absolutely nothing — except take the money. They pretty much submitted the site to a couple article directories and took 500 bucks for their SEO efforts. Using the advice you, grizz, and vic have disseminated, I’ve managed to help get his site to page 2 up from page 20. I also too my own website from page 20 to #5-7 on the first page of Google.
So, keep up the good work!
Cheers
Ben K
I hired them to do my PPC and there was a red flag immediately. I’m no PPC expert, but I ran it profitably for several years. At any rate, the flag: they demanded to use their own account and not take over mine — which had years of history and “goodness” with Google.
Oh, and then there were four more flags. As soon as we switched over to their account and turned mine off? I lost $1,000 in sales the first day (flag one) and then another $1,000 on day two (flag two)…
After the fifth flag, I pulled the plug on it.
The rep had the audacity (ignorance?) to offer me a $300/mo. discount if I’d stay on.
Let’s see, I lost $4,000 with you guys and you want to offer me a $300 discount to keep going? Right.
I’m fairly knowledgeable…I can only imagine how confused and abused the business owners are that don’t “get” this stuff yet.
You know why else Orange Soda sucks? Because after submitting a resume they offered me $10 an hour… part time.
Court, I don’t get it. I would think that with a name like Orange Soda, the type-in traffic for people looking for SEO’s would be huge. I mean, that’s what I think of whenever I think about SEO…right? SEO = Orange Soda…yeah
Don’t know why some of these companies have to have weird names. Probably because they think it’s cool or something. Maybe to hide the fact that many of them do not produce the results they advertise?
“Of course we didn’t rank the keywords you wanted for your companies website, we’re Orange Soda, not SEO Soda!”
I also get a kick out of the SEO companies that claim they have thousands of top 10 rankings…for terms like “Lawyer in Bum Tussle Alabama U.S.A.”
Yeah, searches are strong for those keywords!
The number of “internet marketing” companies that lack SEO knowledge is insane. The company I was talking to (from my email about 2 weeks back) can’t see the value of doing in house SEO.I wanted to take some time to step in on some big brand sites, especially since Google is favoring brands these days. I wanted the in-house experience. I’m really considering sticking with my own business though, cause its a pain trying to explain the value of SEO to a bunch of designers.I pointed out how one of their sites wasn’t even ranking in top 10 for BRAND searches and it has the exact match domain…
Some people just don’t get it. There is a lot of BS in the I.M. area.
Ah Court, once again you’re completely off base. For the record, I have no affiliation with the company, nor have I ever used their services.
But, and this is important, neither have you. You have no idea how well they perform for their clients, you have no idea what kind of training they have in place for their employees or their hiring practices.
Quite simply, you have no basis to judge the company at all, except for the fact that they don’t use the marketing method that YOU decided they should. If they’re growing a lot then a) the marketing methods they are using are apparently working and b) there will be plenty of clients to tell us how they perform.
You’re certainly not the first idiot to use the argument of “they don’t rank for their own terms” or “they can’t rank for SEO” but think about it for just a minute and you’ll realize that doesn’t really matter. If they get their clients to the top of the SERPs for their target terms, is their service crap because they don’t rank for internet marketing?
I’m not sure whether it’s jealousy, you’re trying to pimp the SEO services of this friend of yours, or what, but if you’re going to do a negative review of a company’s service, I would recommend using the service first. Otherwise you just come off looking like an idiot with ulterior motives.
Actually I do know how they are training their employees. I know almost 10 of them.
The ability to sell doesn’t mean that you have the right to take people’s money. Obviously they can do that – obviously it’s working, as I stated in this post.
You have a problem with this post because you have also been criticized here for the inability to rank for the terms you’re going after. Sorry but you don’t get to proclaim yourself as an expert until you can back it up, and that’s the problem with this company right now.
There are plenty of clients who are already telling us how they perform, you can easily find their complaints if you look for them. In fairness, I didn’t link to everything I dug up but you can easily take a look if you would like. There’s more than enough negativity to be found.
If I wanted to ‘pimp’ the SEO services of my friend, obviously I would have linked to him, genius. He happens to already generate more business than he can handle.
Court, first of all, if you’ve criticized me for not being able to rank for terms I target this is the first I’ve heard of it. You really have no idea what rankings I do or don’t have nor the terms I’ve ranked sites for.
Also, your comment here says you know 10 employees, your tweet said that you know 10 people that have been customers. Which is it?
If you don’t link to or quote the negative reviews that are the basis of your article then you come across exactly as I described.
Here’s the problem I have with the post and apparently your overall attitude. If you have to rank for SEO or IM terms to be considered an SEO expert, that means by your standards there are 20 or so decent SEOs (maybe a few more if you count other variations of the terms).
Of course, there are a multitude of competitive terms and people that rank their sites for them quite well. However, you seem content to determine who is and who isn’t an expert based on limited information and knowledge.
I said that between Mark and I we know about 10 customers. I personally know 10 employees.
I could care less how I come across to you, you’ve been combative on every site I’ve ever seen your comments on.
If the people I know that have given them money were happy, this review wouldn’t exist.
If combative means I tell people when I disagree with them then I’m guilty as charged.
If you know former customers, and you know employees, then I’d say you’re quite qualified to write the review. My point was that there was absolutely NO support for your statements in the original post. If you’re ok with that, then so be it.
Then I will speak on the subject. I have used their services. They scoffed at my company’s own baseline results during their sales presentation, basically saying they would deliver at less than half the cost per acquisition. Then, they never came close to meeting our initial results, let along their promise. (And in talking with our rep I soon realized her knowledge was a joke.)
And, because they take full control of your account, you never know what they’re doing or why. In our last month, that they gave us for “free”, they spent everything within the first 2-3 weeks to make it look like suddenly it was raining leads.
Just know this. I am a patient person. But on the basis of (1) the BS they said in their sales pitch, (2) the really poor quality of people I worked with, and (3) the fact that I was suddenly learning new things they were doing with our account that would skew the numbers they gave us, I fully believe Orange Soda deceives its clientele, and…strong words, I know…Orange Soda is one of the worst companies I have ever done business with.
I like how Skitzzo started off one of his own paragraphs by saying, “But, now this is important…”
Gotta admire that confidence in thinking one’s own words so “important”.
If you don’t think what you say is important, why say it? I stated that it was important so no one would miss my point.
Court wrote an entire review of a service without ever mentioning the apparently 10 employees and the 10 former clients that he knows. Without that context he has no basis to provide a review!
Skitzzo. Your face and repeated posts are worthless and annoying. no one cares about your opinion…not one person on this whole earth..how about provide some useful info or just cover your face?
I agree with Skitzzo. What’s the point of this post? The people who read this kind of blog wouldn’t hire them anyway, imo.
Ranking for words like seo, internet marketing, etc are merely ONE form of marketing. If the business owner hasn’t yet had the idea to advertise his business via organic rankings, etc, he wouldn’t find you. So how then do you reach this guy? You call him, write him a letter, etc.
People that read this blog ask me all the time who they should hire for SEO. The point of this post is to give the people that read my site an honest view of what I know about this company.
There are plenty of people here who will pay for SEO in their lifetime, and in my opinion there are a lot of companies that will do a better job. This is a company who I believe took a lot of money from people like you, and I don’t believe they had the expertise. Obviously that’s my opinion.
OK, makes sense.
For the record thay would never take any money from me, I do everything myself and have had very good success for some pretty hard keywords, thanks to reading blogs like this one.
@Don, not to go off topic, but I found someone actually owns seosoda.com lol!
I’ll get in touch
Sounds like bitching to me
Court,
I sent you an email as well but I thought I’d post something on behalf of OrangeSoda in order to clear up some misconceptions and explain a little better who we are and what we do. I thought it would be easiest to address your post point by point.
They Don’t Rank for Their Keywords
No, we don’t rank for internet marketing — yet (we’d love to in the future – although we’ve enjoyed a variety of targeted traffic related to “internet marketing” which is how we’ve grown). We just put up a new website about two weeks ago and decided to target some bigger keywords. At this point there hasn’t been a campaign to rank for “internet marketing.”
“Local internet marketing.” As local is the buzz term for our industry, we’ve targeted terms related to “local” because that’s what we do – local internet marketing. If there are other words you feel we should be targeting but aren’t then that is different discussion. There are countless internet marketing companies and we have to make strategic decisions.
No One Uses Their Site
I don’t have time to do a lot of research on the spot, but I’m confident that our site has more traffic than most online marketing companies. We get a large amount of direct traffic from our brand, quality traffic from search and clients using our reporting.
Also, while setting up the new site a few weeks ago we decided to move our old blog from a subdomain and create four targeted blogs. I’ve noticed many agencies much larger than OrangeSoda that don’t have strong blog followings. Sites like yours that are more community focused do much better with comments. That’s not a driving metric for us at this stage, but of course we’d love to have more. Don’t forget that we are a service and we don’t make our name off of educating others. There is plenty of room in this business and different models fit different business needs.
SEO Does Not Scale Well
This has historically been very true, but what great technology companies do is look at how to use technology to create scale. That is what we are doing, and there aren’t many other businesses attempting to do what OrangeSoda has done…that’s for sure. I was the first SEO to join the company and had the same thought many times a few years back, but we took a deep breath and tackled the task. We began by looking at the process inherent in managing an SEO campaign and then started figuring out ways to eradicate those management inefficiencies through technology solutions. Let me explain what I mean…
One of the most common things I hear from people in the SEO world is that they waste a lot of time. For instance, they are frustrated that data from one tool won’t migrate to the next tool they use in their SEO workflow. Or, they spend hours upon hours researching keywords or reading up on best practices without actually doing something that will have an impact on clients’ rankings, or they spend a lot of time keeping lists of tasks and to-do’s and links – and all this counts as billable time for the client. This is what I mean by management inefficiencies. OrangeSoda has focused and will continue to focus on building technology solutions that make the management process more efficient. SEO itself cannot be automated, we all know that. But the process by which it gets done can become more efficient. That is what we are doing – making managing SEO campaigns and the customer care and interaction more efficient. Think of it this way, how many SEO agencies have a team of developers and product managers who are constantly working to create solutions to help their SEOs get their jobs done more quickly and efficiently? What if you had a large team of developers and product managers that you could go to and tell them what parts of your job were cumbersome and time consuming and that don’t provide real value to the client and have them create solutions for you? That’s OrangeSoda. We are also one of a small group of Google Resellers (big G does their homework on this stuff) which gets us better access to the Local Business Center, APIs, etc. All of this has enabled us to create some really slick technology that makes the actual management of SEO campaigns get done more quickly which brings the cost down for small businesses. That’s what OrangeSoda has done well and it’s something I’m proud to be a part of.
I think you do a great job with what you do. I also feel that we do a great job in our space. In no way do we claim to be the best solution for every business. There’s a reason for our large growth and that’s primarily because we help a lot of people and they’ve spread our name. We’ve built a strong brand. We’re well recognized by others in the industry and our client numbers are constantly growing—even in a slow economy. We didn’t get over 200 employees overnight. It started with a handful of people and as we continue to grow it’s because of our success in the marketplace. It seems to me that evidence would show we’re doing something right. I honestly think you would have a different opinion if you knew us better.
Alex, if you sent me an email, it didn’t come through. The only ones I got were the ones related to going to lunch.
You definitely have a very strong brand, and you have definitely grown very quickly. Your business development is obviously amazing, but I haven’t criticized that.
Here’s the problem you have, as I see it. Almost everything that can be found about you guys online right now is negative. To me that seems pretty easy to control, as long as you are providing true value to your clients. Of course, this doesn’t happen by controlling damage. It happens by providing ROI and reliable service to clients.
I don’t doubt that the business is being run very well. What I want to see from Orange Soda is evidence that every single client is getting their money’s worth.
Growth to me honestly isn’t indicative of anything and I honestly don’t mean to be critical when I say that. It definitely can mean that positive things are happening. It might mean something to other people but you and I both know of companies right here in the Utah that have better marketing machines than you, and shouldn’t be in business. You know who I’m talking about. Their issues are starting to catch up with them because we live in a world where the consumer is getting more and more power.
What I would want to know from you Alex is what sets your SEO apart from everyone else. Right now all I ever get is that you guys have grown super fast, it’s a great place to work, etc. That doesn’t really satisfy me.
There’s a lot I didn’t say here, out of fairness to you guys. What I didn’t say in the post is that we have some clients that have used some of your services. It’s through my interactions with people that have hired you that I decided to post about your company.
I was able to find one positive press release and a ton of negativity, and that combined with interactions I have had with people who have given you guys money makes me nervous.
When I met you Alex, I honestly thought you were a great guy (I still think that). I also know Janet and honestly she’s a really really great person. I feel like I have a responsibility to tell people what I know and what I’ve heard so far isn’t good. If I start to meet people who have used your service and have liked it, I will take it as evidence that you guys are getting better at providing your clients with a legitimate ROI. I believe that you personally could do this, but there are obviously holes in the system if almost everything online about the company is negative and everything I hear is negative.
I’m definitely willing to yield that you guys could be getting a lot better at everything. I hope that’s the case. If it is, I’ll start to hear good things from people that have hired you. I obviously run into these individuals often or I wouldn’t have posted anything.
Nothing would make me happier than to change my tune. My interest has nothing to do with bringing anyone down, it’s more about protecting people I interact with. You guys honestly aren’t a big name in my world and this post won’t go anywhere. I knew that before I clicked ‘publish’.
My question to you right now would be why would I continue to allow people who trust me to buy from you, when I know people who have bought from you and are unhappy? If I knew people who were happy with you, this would be a different conversation. I’m not sure what else to say.
I get a chuckle out of thios indeed, having spent a lot of time in ‘corporate America’ … you know like the guys who keep building gas guzzlers and then ask the government to help them unload them … becuase gas guzzler’s have _always_ been profitable?
Court made some cogent comments of fact, Alex comes back with a line of corporate blather-speak that a blind fish wouldn’t swallow. Apparently Orange Soda has enjoyed a large degree od success, their web site id well done, well trafficed and enjoys a gangbuster PR … anti-business Google must think they’re a non-profit.
But to not rank for the very words you use in your top site headline is poor business for a firm expecting to get business from the web. Then to spew oput paragraphs of corporate double speak trying to deny the importance of ranking, at the same time they are trying to _sell_ ranking to clients is either arrogant, ignorant or a bit of both.
You know when you wander arund at a party for an hour oe so, and _then_ someone whispers to you that your fly is open, it’s pretty damn embarrassing.
A wise man just zips up and tries to enjoy the rest of the evening, a not so wise man draws everyone’s attention to his fau pax by trying to deny he left the zipper down to begin with. It comes across in a way that certainly wouldn’t win any trust or business from me.
Are you just dismissing Alex’s statements that they’ve just relaunched their site and are only now targeting Internet Marketing?
I have no idea if that’s accurate or not but if true, I don’t know many sites that would rank for IM in 2 weeks time.
They redesigned their site, it’s been up since 2007 and I’ve been watching it the whole time.
Court, I did the same thing that they charge people for to bring my site to page one simply by following yours and Griz’s free advice. I know that corporations and companies don’t have the time to do what I did, and a service like Orange Soda may be the perfect niche for them. Why couldn’t a company hire from within to do the SEO work? Sounds like a waste of money to me. I did it and now consider myself an expert(facitiously speaking). Keywords and anchored text backlinks. That’s the ticket. No need to hire someone.
I agree, Ben. Hiring someone to work full time on a company’s internet marketing would be a smart move for any business. Even if they had to do it at the expense of cutting other forms of advertising. Between internet marketing in its various forms, and taking the time to create press releases that actually get printed, businesses could replace their other forms of marketing.
Just my two cents of an idea from reading your comment. I’m pretty sure that in-house SEOs are going to become more and more prevalent as time goes on.
Court, I don’t know enough about Orange Soda to either support or refute your assertions, but I just don’t understand the point of attacking a competitor by name. How does this help you? I’ve read many of your posts before and you clearly know your stuff, but a piece like this is disappointing.
I recently wrote a post on how to avoid bad SEO. I initially considered calling out a few firms whose shady practices have been exposed online, but then thought the better of it.
It’s important to protect the reputation of the industry and educate clients and prospects on how to hire a respectable firm rather than a shady one; I just think that is better done without attacking specific companies and running the risk of looking like a jerk.
Hey Tom, they actually aren’t a competitor of mine. We don’t do the same thing at all. I don’t do SEO for people and they don’t do what I do.
What would you do if you kept meeting people that really regretted giving a company money, and you had the power to alert 10,000 people? I would hope that you would let people know.
Court, that’s an interesting question. I’d like to say I’d try to contact the vendor first and get their side of the story so I’m presenting a balanced picture, but that’s an ideal.
Ouch! Very disappointed with this entire conversation. I agree with Tom Pick. Why name a specific company?
The focus of this site has always been positive, until now. Why deviate from what makes you guys unique? This post sounds very personal.
SinDe this isn’t personal. We don’t compete or even operate in the same space. One day they are going to cold call you and try to sell you an SEO service. They will tell you that they are the best SEO firm on the planet. You will know the truth.
Court,
Not to get into this discussion any deeper than I am, let me just say from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE I have not employed this specific company however, as a former owner of an art gallery I paid someone to develop a website for the gallery and was bombarded by companies calling wanting to do SEO, each saying they would take my gallery to the top of the list. Of course, back then I didn’t know keyword from php or javascript or Wordpress. I paid hundreds of dollars a month to one company after another until I realized that the only ones profiting from the website and my gallery were SEO companies.
I have always been taught to hire the experts rather than do my taxes myself and in the case of SEO to hire the experts rather than waste my time learning something that others already knew. Well, unfortunately, I discovered that there are few people or companies online who live up to the hype.
Had I not talked to Mark directly and been convinced that the course I signed up for was going to give me a tremendous return on investment I would never have paid my money. Yes, I am the ultimate skeptic.
The point is that every SEO company representative I have talked with over the years I owned the gallery promised more than I should have expected and delivered only a recurring monthly bill. That was my ignorance.
Luckily for me, I have learned to get my own sites to Google’s first page… thanks to you and Mark. Anyone who pays for SEO after signing up for the Keyword course has more money than intelligence. (My opinion.)
All that said, I am still disappointed that you would single out one company by name. You and Mark have always taken the high road as far as my experiences. There is no need to step into the manure because the smell is hard to get rid of.
Just keep teaching us things to make us money. No one would even consider a SEO company.
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with calling a company out by name. If they are selling an SEO service, they should be able to show a ROI for the majority of their clients.
Additionally, there is nothing wrong with saying that you provide a better ROI than competitors or describe specifically what differentiates yourself froma specific competitor.
Kudos for a job well done.
Thanks for the heads up Court! Some of these idiots just can’t see that you are trying to look after your community. This post came at great time for me, I appreciate the post.
I loved when Orange Soda wouldn’t provide me with at least a sample of the blogs where they were acquiring links for one of my sites. They said it was “proprietary.”
I also wasn’t too warm to the idea of them posting blog comments on my behalf, representing my company with any type of comment they thought would work (and then they wouldn’t show me any example comments)…
Opaque with their clients. That’s what I really didn’t like.
You are entitled to know where the links were placed. Comments is pretty ineffective and used a lot by spammers.
I run a blog and 98% of the comments are spam.
You should be shown all links and comments. You are not setting up a competing SEO firm. Additionally, they can ask you for a Non Disclosure agreement.
YES!!! I love it when people comment bash! How about you do a review of SEO.com… A firm who actually ranks for the term SEO.
I have heard of many dissatisfied customers of Orange Soda. There are much better firms out there.
4 days after reading this I now rank #1 and #2 for “Real Local Internet Marketing” I know it was tough
Still a long ways from “local internet marketing” but a good example of being able to quickly rank for both useful and lame long tail words. This is not rocket science and with the teachings of Court and Mark we can all rank for pretty much anything we want.
Hmmm… I think this will make a great People Do Not Appreciate Free Part 3 by Vic. Try to help readers and people start complaining.
Sorry guys I’m a little late to the party. Here is my two cents for what it’s worth.
There is way too much talk about local SEO & Small Business lately. Too many SEO firms (small and big) are trying to compete for the same piece of the pie. This market saturation created very tense environment where a few unhappy customers can literally ruin your reputation overnight. And not because you may suck, but because your competitors will make sure that one bad comment spreads across like wildfire. So there you have it. Should you hire OrangeSoda (or any other SEO)? That’s for you to decide.
Personally, I think local SEO is overhyped. Sure you need to claim you local listing and have SEO’d website. What you don’t need is a service that sells you $4,000 lemon while promising you the flood of new business. As a business owner I could care less SEO, PPC, SEM or any other “magic” you may offer. All I care about is ROI! Charge me four large ones (and I’ll be glad to pay it), but you better deliver on your promise, and if you don’t, Court and others will be too happy to spread the word.
I just terminated my AdWords account with OrangeSoda, for what it is worth. I just did not get anything at all from having used their services. In fact, I got more out of less when I managed the account myself. I think I may just manage it all myself instead of relying on someone that does not seem to understand what they are doing. I am seeing online that there are not many who are pleased with the work of OrangeSoda. Pretty disappointing.
Rather than paying someone to manage your PPC, or even managing it yourself, why not just fix the technical inaccuracies on each page of the site, write some professional SEO content, and have the site come up in the organic results for tons of different key phrases?
That’s what I do, although my procedure is radically different from all the other SEO companies offering this service. Contact me if you need help.
I have been having a horrible time dealing with orange soda – what is it that you do for your site Scott? It sounds more like what I need to do. I want to learn how to get my site to the top on my own by fixing the site, not hiring a marketing company with huge monthly fees and playing this waiting game not knowing if they are even doing anything.
Colleen – I don’t want to exploit this thread to advertise – please contact me directly at pctutor@gmail.com.
Scott
I really tried to work with these guys but their skills were marginal and their organization was non-existent. They consistently overcharged me and then got attitude when I asked for refunds. It took over 3 weeks to setup a simple pay per click campaign, during which they came back with every excuse you could think of. Once the campaign went live, it was wrong. They made countless mistakes, all of which I had to find and notify them of. Stay away from these posers.
It is always important to do some background information and to conduct research to know if the firm is okay or not.
I think Orangecrush ummm I mean Orangesoda hit a market for local businesses. Local terms are easy to rank for. It becomes more of a problem for regional and a big problem for national customers.
We hired Orange soda and it has turned into a nightmare. These people will say anything to get you to hire them, and they take your money faster than a bank robber. From the moment we hired them, they changed the agreed upon terms and let our account sit idle for over 2 weeks. Nothing but lies and excuses from Orange Soda. We are in the middle of a dispute with them and my only hope is that we get our money back. My advice to anyone reading this is NEVER do business with Orange Soda.
I’ve been looking into Orange Soda for the past few weeks. I’ve done the PPC on Google,MSN, and Yahoo. But I’d like to have more of a SEO type website. Do you think I should hire them? If not anyone suggest a good one they’ve used?
Thanks,
Cameron Bradford
Cameron – highly recommend http://www.site-search-architect.com – all white hat SEO software that automates the entire process.
Used Orange for 6 months. Did get a good keyword on the first page. Here’s the kicker. The monthly reports were only articles and blog links. I’m assumed all the work done was in the reports. The work done was outsourced to freelance writers which which I could check online. OK, but I can hire a freelancer directly to write articles at 2 cents a word, and someone to do blog links for a couple dollars a link. It did just not add for the price I was paying.
So you got good results but you’re complaining about how they did it for you? If you’re an expert on link building, why did you hire them?
I am considering having orange soda do an on page seo analysis for between $500-$1000 one time only. I am moving up the ranking very quickly but on google I am very displeased w/my progress. Of course the site is relatively new so I am not sure what the actual problem is and don’t know if i should simply just give it more time. After reading this page, I get the feeling that seo should be more in this nature than link building or article submissions which should be done by a staff member to ensure quality content and quality link building. What is the general consensus on this site, to do analysis w/orange soda or use another vendor, or just wait? I am beginning to think there is no such thing as on page seo.
Ha just googled “Orange Soda SEO” and this pagewas one of the top results. The REASON I was googling them is because a potential client of ours showed us a proposal they worked up for them and it was basically ours with the logo replaced and reworded a little. We are used to seeing local competitors steal our proposals but never thought a large national SEO firm would lol.
Seems like these guys are scam but I love the web design – nice 2.0 feel!!!
I COMPLETELY agree with all you have said. I’m starting a company to compete with them because I know they don’t practice what they preach. It’s a joke.
Court, how can i get ahold of you directly? website or IM?
My boss hired this company about a month ago. I do all the graphics and update the site and work with a in-house web developer 9-5 everyday. I’m pretty involved in what the web can bring us and what it can’t. One day my boss mentioned the name ORANGE SODA…. They help with SEO. We said ok, so what do you want to do? I was way too busy at the time to do any research on the company we were going to give $1,500 a month for the next 6 months so he went a head and started a contract.
After maybe 3 days they gave us a list on broken link and what not to fix so we can have a better site….. We fixed that within a few hours and that was the last we heard from them. The person who “handles” our account said be ready for updates about every three days for little tasks our developer should handle to better our site for rankings. So far only one in the last month and a half.
To me that’s not good at all, especially since we are a small company barely making it as is. Now were stuck with paying for a service that doesn’t seem to promising. My boss wouldn’t mind paying if it works but now that he seeing we are not getting anything from it we have a big problem.
Oh and since we’re a small company we hear everything that goes on when it comes to phone calls and what not. The boss has asked us “Did you hear from ORANGE SODA today” and we say nope. So he’ll get on the phone and to this day he has never talked to his “account manager”. I leaned over and mentioned it to him after his 5th call. I said have you noticed you still haven’t spoke to your guy yet? I said they are full of shit over there…… Wish I had done some research before we threw away $9,000 on paying for some other companies payroll while we sit here and suck dick just to speak to the wrong person.
Anyways, maybe we fight and try to cancel our contract…. Not worth it. Maybe they do help us rank better…. Well for the $9,000 we are suppose to pay them they fuck better but if we can’t even speak to the right person over the phone that’s not right. Fair is fair… Earn your fucking money and handle your customers the right way.
the only way to get indexed by the search engines is through content, write articles with your keyword terms. Sorry about what happended to you, i cant believe you paid that much. I offer SEO with my website packers they are only 1500 all inclusive.
We’ve used Orange Soda for 2 months and our business is down by 2/3.
We have 1 more month in our 3 month agreement.
Hope our business hangs on that long.
We used Orange Soda for our internet marketing at the company that I work for and they were absolutely terrible! Their customer service is terrible – they do not communicate, and their campaigns do not work!! DO NOT USE THIS BUSINESS FOR YOUR INTERNET MARKETING! THEY WILL ROB YOU!!
We used Orangesoda and were locked into a contract for six months. We signed up their SEO and Google Local optimization services. It was a terrible experience. Our traffic went down significantly every month that we worked with them.
In addition, as far as their Google local program, I don’t think they did anything. They said they would get us to the “A” spot within six months. I couldn’t even find our listing anywhere. Every time I asked them for a report on Google local, they said it was a new service and they didn’t have any customer reports available yet.They said it was working and I just needed to trust them. At the end of the campaign, I logged into my Google local account and noticed they hadn’t adjusted any of the default settings. For example, there is a setting that says “Does your business provide services, such as delivery or home repair, to locations in a certain area?” We exclusively work at the customer’s business and they never made the change to reflect this. I made this one simple change and now we show up on Google places.
Noe of these Seo Firms can promise High ranking Why? because its called content thats why unless your seo an SEO expert that is going to write tons of articles for you “based on keywords that are carefully researched”. than what could he or she possible do to help you rank.
Rank or page position depends on three factors
1.) how important you are your PR
& the number of people who are linking back to you
2.) the article itslef and the keywords its optimized for
3.) the meta info and the links out that you include in that article
I spend hours doing this to rank for certain search ter,s and keywords for my industry i still dont rank for major keyowrds, and you cant ovrenight SEO takes time people, time and content.
Great thread! I work for Beanstalk SEO and I’ve actually had to compete against these guys when putting together proposals for potential clients. One time I ran their website through keywordspy, and ours through keywordspy and sent the results to the potential client just to show them their rankings versus ours. On the plus side they have moved up to #74 for Internet Marketing…. but I’ll take our #1 for SEO Services on Google….
On a side note I looked them up today because one of their sales reps tried to cold call us because the boss attended a conference at the end of 2008…. that call was only around 18 months late to be an effective sales call….
os does a good job
well our house is undergoing home repair this month because of termite attack.,`:
i tried SEO Marketing for my clickbank affiliate products and it is also good.;:~
Some seo experts charge top dollars for website optimization.,.’
Home repair could really blow a hole in your pocket as it is quite costly theses days..’`
SEO marketing is always the best thing to do if you want to market products on the internet..*